Black Lion Chesthttp://blacklionchest.co.uk
A Guild Wars 2 fan–site aims to provide interesting articles and useful tools for other playersMore Dragonhunter changesI had a great time finally getting my hands on the Dragonhunter in the second Heart of Thorns beta
weekend, and wrote about it at length for GuildMag. While some agreed with me and were happy
to see some positive reflections on this elite specialisation, the majority of the responses that I
had were trying to tell me that my experience couldn’t have possibly been any good because the whole
Dragonhunter design is terrible, traps are the worst, and (my personal favourite) “posts like this
are what make ArenaNet think that guardians have been in a good place for the last three years”. I
still refute all of their negativity, and feel that most of it stems from the mistaken belief that
elite specs are intended to be a direct upgrade to core trait lines, as opposed to
providing an alternative playstyle; something that I believe that the Dragonhunter provides well.

Ahead of an as yet unannounced third beta weekend, Dragonhunter designer and all–round enthusiastic
owner of hair Karl McLain (bring back the skill bar!) has posted another raft of upcoming changes
on the official forums, which you can read for yourself here. I’m going to whip through them
quickly below.

Virtues

Spear of Justice: Increased missile velocity by 100%. Reduced the casting speed from 3/4
second to 1/4 second. Updated skill facts when virtue traits are equipped. Fixed a bug that
caused this trait to not trigger with Wrath of Justice. Reduced recharge from 25 to 20. This
ability is now unblockable.

The increased missile velocity is something seen across the board and will help to make the
Dragonhunter’s abilities feel snappier, as will the reduced cast time. Making it unblockable
certainly doesn’t hurt either. The interaction with the Wrath of Justice trait isn’t
something that I tried testing during BWE2 but it synergises well with the longbow, gifting Spear
of Justice an additional 3 second immobilize to keep enemies at range if you spec into Radiance.

Wings of Resolve: This ability now removes Immobilize at the beginning. Cooldown has been
reduced from 50 seconds to 30.

This is an excellent change, and something that I’d suggested would work nicely to change Wings of
Resolve into a fully functioning “oh shit” button, allowing you to leap out of harms way and heal
up. Would I rather have a range increase from 600 to 900 instead of the reduction in cooldown?
Perhaps, but having a strong AoE heal effect now on a 30 second cooldown is likely to be of some
use as we make the step up into 10–person raiding. One change that I would still like to see would
be for the cast time to be reduced; it feels a little strange that this, a clutch heal, is the
slowest of the new physical virtues.

Shield of Courage: Reduced the cast to 0.25 seconds. The after-cast of this ability has been
reduced by 200 ms. This ability now blocks all attacks from the front, while attacks from behind
will strike the guardian.

Now that this blocks all attacks again instead of just blocking projectiles I’m interested to see
how well it works in group content. Depending, obviously, on encounter design I could potentially
see this being used to completely negate a frontal attack from a boss, allowing the rest of the
party to stay in melee range and lay the smack down instead of having to move out to safety.

Longbow

Puncture Shot: Increased missile velocity by 66%

Here is another tweak to make the longbow feel more responsive. Auto–attack damage felt reasonable
to me in BWE2 and clearly didn’t warrant a further increase by the devs.

True Shot: Damage increased by 12.5%

Cries abound to have the root removed from True Shot, but I’m actually in favour of the direction
that’s being taken instead. Keep the (slight) penalty while increasing the pay–off by buffing the
damage. Looking forward to bursting some mordrem heads with this again.

Deflecting Shot: Reduced missile velocity by 25%. Reduced after-cast by 300 milliseconds.
Increased base damage by 13%. Destroying a projectile with this ability increases the damage it
deals by 100%. Increased the blocking radius by 33%. The attack radius of this ability has not
been increased.

These changes had been mentioned in a previous forum post but didn’t make it into BWE2. In theory
they should definitely work to make this skill shot more compelling. I never managed to block
projectiles on a tangent, like a curtain wall across between an enemy and an ally, but I was
able to put it to good effect facing straight–on against the deadly mordrem snipers.

Symbol of Energy: Increased missile velocity by 60%. Increased symbol damage by 10%. Initial
burning impact now inflicts two stacks of burning, up from one. This skill can now be fired
behind you.

I’m very happy to see that the burning stacks are staying on Symbol of Energy, after it had
previously been indicated that they would be removed; longbow could yet find a place in a condition
damage build.

Traps

Some members of the community are suggesting that traps ought to be completely replaced, and that
they’re anti–synergetic with longbow, but I don’t buy it. Traps may not suit a melee–oriented
stacking DPS playstyle (although I think that they may see some use in that fashion) but are instead
designed to be laid for enemies to be lured through for a sizeable pay–off. I believe that the
Dragonhunter traps currently do this very well, backed up by the longbow skills that enable the
player to kite in a controlled manner. I don’t agree either with the people calling for
Dragonhunter traps to be AoE–targetted like wells or staff marks. We already have skills like that;
these are supposed to support a different playstyle.

Traps (general): Reduced the cast time of all traps to 1/2 second, down from 1 second.

This is a nice quality of life improvement across the board, and will make dropping traps in melee
(as I liked to do with Light's Judgement for vulnerability stacking) a little bit easier. I’m happy,
but it’s unlikely win over the unbelievers!

Purification: Fixed an issue that caused this ability to not function correctly with Runes of
the Trapper.

Just a bugfix, although I must admit that I wasn’t even aware that Runes of the Trapper
existed until now; it makes me wonder if there’s some fun condi longbow/trapper build in there for
me to use in Stronghold.

Traits

Piercing Light: This trait has been reworked. While activating, traps will now daze enemies in
the radius for 1 second. Trap recharges are reduced by 20%.

Not sure about this one. Losing the bleeds is definitely going to throw a wrench in the works of
any potential condition builds. I’m still hoping that we get a whirl finisher on
Procession of Blades so that it could be used to apply additional condition stacks when used
in a combo field. The daze effect doesn’t seem all that enticing as a replacement.

Zealot’s Aggression: This trait now allows Justice’s passive effect to cripple, in addition to
dealing extra damage to crippled enemies.

Now this is something that I’m looking forward to trying out. How good it is will depend on how
often the cripple effect triggers and how long it lasts: will it be perma–cripple against anyone
that you have tethered with Spear of Justice? An earlier forum post suggested that this trait was
due a damage increase from 7% to 10% which seems to have fallen by the wayside (or been left off
of this list).

Hunter’s Determination: This trait has been reworked to apply aegis to the guardian and drop a
Fragments of Faith trap at their location when controlled.

I’m a little sad about this change as well, since I’ve been using this trait to maintain a little
bit of extra mobility. That being said, the new implementation actually seems like it could be more
powerful, albeit in a PvP setting. In PvE I fully expect to be taking Dulled Senses instead.

Dulled Senses: This trait has been updated: Enemies you knock back are crippled. Enemies you
cripple are also inflicted with vulnerability.

Bonus vulnerability. Sure, why not? With the change to Zealot’s Aggression giving Dragonhunter’s a
way to passively apply cripple to enemies we suddenly have synergy popping up all over the place.
Now we have both this trait and the grandmaster trait Big Game Hunter adding vulnerability stacks
to tethered enemies, and a cumulative 17% damage increase, on top of the burning that is being
applied. I can see Zealot’s Aggression/Dulled Senses/Big Game Hunter being the de facto trait
configuration for PvE Dragonhunters.

Hunter’s Fortification: This trait has been reworked to remove conditions when blocking
attacks. In addition, receive less damage when you have no conditions on you.

How many conditions will it remove and how often? Could we combo this with Shield of Courage for a
full personal condition clear or will it be hampered by an internal cooldown? This is arguably less
effective that AoE protection in a group context.

Heavy Light: This trait has been updated: Longbow arrows knock back when enemies are within
the range threshold. Gain stability when you knock an enemy back.

Moving the stability gain from Hunter’s Determination to Heavy Light is interesting, and something
that should actually work pretty well in PvP. Depending on how the internal cooldown is set this
could result some a pretty powerful close–range longbow play.

tl;dr

Some decent changes here, but it still feels like the traps will need some love to win other people
over. Spear of Justice and Wings of Resolve got a whole lot better, but Shield of Resolve still
seems slightly confused. I’m a little concerned about where condition applications are going to
come from with a longbow/trap setup now that bleeds have been replaced with daze. Overall I’m still
happy with the playstyle that is opened up by taking the Dragonhunter elite spec, and am really
excited to see how it can be applied to challenging content.

I’ve writtenpreviously about what challenging group content might be in Guild Wars 2,
and after PAX Prime we finally know: 10–man instanced raiding! My heart leaps with joy at the idea
of once again being able to put myself through hell over and over on raid night, dashing our bodies
against the metaphorical (or maybe literal?) rocks of boss encounters that we find in each wing.

Raiding: what will we need to do to defeat the nefarious Knights of RGB?

World of Warcraft is my MMO alma mater, and I (largely) enjoyed raiding in 40–, 25– and 10–man
groups, but it was completing operations in Star Wars: The Old Republic three years ago is my most
recent experience. Sure, there can be social and logistical issues with getting groups of people
together to try and best difficult content, but it’s something that I’ve keenly missed throughout
my adventures in Tyria to date. I’m very excited that they’re on their way.

So far we know precious few details. They will be for 10 players at a time. They will be instanced.
They will be “the hardest content” that we’ve seen so far. They will be released in wings. They
will be linked to the mastery horizontal account progression system (e.g. gliding was given as an
example for one boss encounter). They will reward players with the parts required to make
precursors to legendary armour.

Wait, what? Oh yes. That’s right. LEGENDARY. ARMOUR. It was even confirmed that this will
function as you would expect it to: the stats will match ascended gear, and out of combat you can
change it to whichever stats you want. To my mind, this is the perfect end–game gear progression,
and I will definitely be making it a long–term goal to collect a full set of light, medium, and
heavy legendary armour.

Uh, guys… don’t look back, okay?

Assuming the the overall cost will be greater, for me the stat changing means that there’s more
impetus to go for legendary over ascended. Most people seem to go straight for berserker (power,
precision, ferocity) ascended gear because of the high cost of creating it; now that we’re seeing
viable—or even optimal in the case of some professions—condition builds, it would be interesting
to see whether or not we start to see more sinister (condition damage, power, precision) around.

Legendary armour will also fit very nicely into the design that ArenaNet have for raid content,
specially with regards to composition and roles that players must fill. While we still won’t see
the so called tank–healer–damage ’holy trinity’ of old, we do have the ‘soft trinity’ of
control–support–damage. The idea is that any of the 9 professions should be able to fulfil any of
these roles based on their traits/specialisation, skills, and equipment. With most players going
into raiding carrying a single set of fixed–stat exotic or ascended gear, there won’t be many
chances to switch between roles optimally, but I’m interested to see how it’ll all work out.

]]>Sat, 29 Aug 2015 23:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/legen-wait-for-it-dary
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/legen-wait-for-it-daryWriting for GuildMagIt’s been far too long since I posted anything here—or wrote anything at all—but in an effort to
keep this project rolling along I thought that it would be fun to draw attention to the work that I
did at GuildMag earlier in the year. Although I’ve stepped back recently,
largely due to a lack of impetus to write articles (and partly due to a burgeoning obsession with
the LCG Android: Netrunner), they’re a very talented team and I miss working with them. I hope
to be able to get back to it before too much time has passed, possibly starting with some coverage
of EGX in Birmingham at the end of September.

I’m really happy with some of the content that I was able to contribute, so if you haven’t read
it already, please cast your glance over the following:

Much of that speculation can now be replaced with actual facts; a novelty that will be
repeated in a fortnight when Mike O’Brien and Colin Johanson take to the stage at PAX Prime to
talk about the ever–vague ‘challenging group content’. I'll be on the edge of my seat both with a
rabid sense of excitement, and to see how much I got right!

They’re back in the Verdant Brink today to talk about a couple of Mastery tracks: gliding and
mushrooms. Option to open the glider up after jumping off of a cliff. Mastery points earned from
exploration and adventures. Gliding is unlocked this way and can be upgraded to increase duration
and the ability to use updrafts to get to new areas. Gliding has an endurance meter which runs down
as you fly around. We’ll get our first point when we enter Heart of Maguuma so that we earn
progression while playing the new content. All abilities will be unlocked account-wide. Mastery
system will be rolled out in Tyria at the same time, and will include unlocking collections that
lead towards earning legendary precursors. This system is going to be one of the major pillars
going forwards and will be extended through content patches, such as the Living World.

Spotted a new sub–zone: Vine Filled Abyss. Glider can be released and then reapplied in mid–air:
“just takes practice”. Gliding appears to only go down unless you find updrafts to launch you
higher. The idea is that exploration abilities will give you the ability to get more points, and
upgrade, and get more points, etc. Metroidvania progression system, which they’ve mentioned
before. Updrafts will fill up your gliding endurance bar. Gliding will be available in the beta
test at PAX East (and, presumably, EGX Rezzed). Endurance bar looks like it refills as you plummet
through the air.

There will be parts of events that you won’t be able to get to without unlocked/upgraded abilities.
You’ll need those in order to get gold on some events, which should encourage replay. Various types
of mushrooms to use. Speed. Healing. Jumping. Skill recharge. Not a hotbar skill, but something in
the world that can play into the strategy of overcoming certain challenges. Lore masteries will
enable us to trade with friendly races, and can lead to unlocking new areas, e.g. through using
sigils/runes that are unlocked.

Some new Mordrem enemies will be unbeatable unless you or someone in the group have certain
masteries unlocked, most likely tied to lore. Piercing hardened armor. “Earn the points, earn the
ability, then come back and do the challenge”. Perfect example of how meaningful progression will
be added to the game for and beyond Heart of Thorns. Not necessarily always new lines but new
abilities. Extendible platform for adding to areas of the game. Mastery will be shown in the
nameplate as a number of points. Bragging rights/open world leaderboard. Considered to be like the
world complete star that we already have.

Looks like we start in the jungle summit with the wrecked Pact Fleet: Verdant Brink.
Working through the Pale Reaver outpost events that were mentioned in the week. Pulling
in what worked well from season two. Map wide objectives. This map focuses on getting
ready for a Mordrem attack at night. Almost everything in the new maps will be
contributing/themed around the map-wide objective so that everyone is working towards the
same goal. Number of outposts on the new map; some claimed, others not. Outputs designed to
give players more agency in controlling the map; could result in you holding part of the
map for over an hour. Focusing on telling stories with a smaller cast of persistent
characters. We're seeing the first area in the expansion where Laranthir crash landed.
Mordrem creatures which spawn minions. 'Mordrem Court' sylvari enemy spotted. 'Mordrem
Guard Sniper' that was humanoid but didn't necessarily look sylvari.

Adventures! Has a banner in the world like guild missions. They have a map icon.
Definitely an evolution of renown hearts in the base game. Lots of different kinds of
game content could be adventures, including activities like the shooting gallery that
was mentioned before release. Think of them as performance-based personal challenges.
Sounds like there will be leaderboards, at least in-guild. Standing by the wreck of a
Pact ship, which still has some supplies in it. Running around torching vines with a
flamethrower in a given time. Everything is personal; no sniping of enemies or resources.
Really reminds me of challenge events in Wildstar. Getting a good score in this adventure
is down to being quick and learning where the vines spawn. Hopefully most adventures will
have an element of tension that isn't just the time limit. Talk of 'unlocking the map'
which definitely leans towards the new zones being paywalled, as expected. Adventures can
be ended early and you get an instant retry. The idea is that these will help to make
the new maps really replayable. Map content should be "deep and dense". This will be part
of the demo at PAX East.

Masteries! Nothing today, but there will be a bonus episode of Points of Interest next
Wednesday at noon PST to show gliding and mushroom jumping.

Twitter picked up on the fact that the warrior that was being played had a second burst
skill above their action bar. There was also a 'New Year of the Ram' event showing
top-right, which is likely to be coming up soon. We also caught a glimpse at the Revenant
class icon after the dev client crashed!

PAX South in a week. Lots to talk about to pass the time. Feels really far away and really close.
"Impending doom and excitement at the same time" - Colin

Shout out to BogOtter for pre-stream. AuroraPeachy is doing a post-show.

Fan art. Quaggan baubels. Killer whale quaggan in Shiverpeaks (internal name). Sylvari in a salad
bowl. Idea of things to come, perhaps! Grouch had to rule the chat with an iron fist.

Colin thinks Peter Fries should be the face of the hype train instead.

Season two. Opening up new zones. New types of events. Huge storyline. Far-reaching effects.
Getting back in Guild Wars lore. They don't think of season two as separate from everything that
came before it, even back to GW for some storylines. Zephyrites big theme this season. Introduced
back in mid-2013. Testament to the narrative team and the planning. Working out how crash would
happen. Love Zephyrites because they helped Lion's Arch in season one. Colin rememers a Peachy
video about them coming back with dread because he knew they'd all be dead soon (lol). Have to
give just enough hints for people to latch onto, but not enough to give it away. Pieces got
stronger and stronger until it all came together in season two.

Definitely tried to set Zephyrites up as good people so we'd feel invested in them. Made us want
to go and help them in Dry Top. Glow in the ship cinematic. Canach's billet being bought. Hints in
story. Really try hard not to be too blatant; just enough to show that it was planned all along.
Worry if things are too subtle. That balance has been one of their main challenges with the living
story.

Worked with environment artists for verticality of Dry Top. Weaved instances into open world play.
One of the cool things that worked well. Core release lacked cohesion between personal story, open
world, dungeons. Too disparate. This is a big focus for them going forward: asked the team to
solve it for season two. "Belongs in one cohesive story, experience." Opening Dry Top in sections
was largely tied to story progression. Silverwastes was a big PvE/WvW mashup which made sense to
open in one large chunk. Trying to play to the strengths of the story overall.

Key moment for Dry Top was the idea of the sandstorm. Cool idea became meta event which determined
how the whole map would work. Synergy. Core release has a lot of discrete events scattered around
which you might only ever do once. Game doesn't make it worth your while to go back and do them.
Season two tried to fix that. Gameplay prepares you for future content and rewarded you well. More
important/impactful. Paradigm that will be taken forward. Silverwastes meta evolved as episodes
came out. Both maps show that the above can be achieved and can introduce original content/events.
Important for content to feel replayable/more life in it.

"Finding the fun" - Silverwastes maze. Initial implementation was fun from the start so it stuck.
Sometimes takes some time to refine. Maze inspired in part by Pac-man (wakka wakka wakka).

Main aim going forward is cohesion. Art. Story. Gameplay. Not being so strict that it restricts
personal creativity and ideas. A lot based on instinct.

Always ongoing discussion to see how things fit in. Belinda was going to die. Tried to see where
it would fit in the story arc. Once we started our quest to find the egg it didn't make sense to
drop it in. Airstrikes weren't added until late on as well. "Too OP? Who cares? It's really fun."
Emergent gameplay as they develop. Prophecies. Had an extra map in Glint's architecture before
shipping. Turned it into a big hold out map. Ended up inventing the baby dragon and putting it in
the game. One of Colin's favourite things he got to work on. Always watching what players are
saying too. Sylvari storyline began with Eye of the North a long, long time ago with Ree Soesbee.
Reinforced by books.

Wondered if Sylvari 1-10 gave away too much. 6 years in the making. Important to show it from
different perspectives: Scarlet, Caithe, Aerin, Canach. Build-up was a challenge and broadly
successful. Fun to look back and see how it all fits together.

There are other storylines seeded in the game that haven't been revealed yet. Will be fun to get
to and answer those over the life of GW2. Everything will make sense when you see the reveal.

"Why do you keep showing us Rytlock when he doesn't show up in the next patch?" - working very far
out on story. They feel like they could do 50 different storylines - which ones do they pick to
work on? Exciting and overwhelming. Lesson taken from season one is to try and get to the core
story beats more frequently. Better pacing for season two. Always iterating to try and get better.
Company restructured after season one to support better pacing.

Love the argument over who voted for Kiel/Gnashblade.

Short run down of who Glint was. Dead (sorry). "Dragon before her time". Prophet. Friend to all of
us. Told of the impending rise of the bad guys in Guild Wars. People should go and play it for
themselves. Lots we don't know about the egg. Linked to Kralkatorrik. Glint's legacy has been a
big part of the story and will continue to be.

Team got really excited about the library in the Durmand Priory. Grew beyond original scope due to
team's passion. Great example of "everyone firing on all cylinders"; writers, artists. Loved
reinventing Glint's Lair. Talked about having Glint's Lair the start of the next episode, but left
it in episode five for technical reasons. Might try not to leave quite so many cliffhangers.
Question of pacing. Some episodes will be bigger than others. Statue of Abaddon really set the tone.

Knew where Sylvari were headed with the ultimate reveal. Had to set that up for pacing which is why
such a heavy season two focus, different perspectives, introducing characters, etc. Complex concept

what does it mean? People should take the time now to go back and read the books. Play the
Sylvari tutorial. "How are we going to phrase the Dream and set it all up?" Everything built
knowing that this is where they would be heading.

Episodes designed so that they could be played standalone, but playing all of them will give a
deeper and richer experience. Playing episodes live when they come out, and then watching how the
world changes outside of stories. Always a sense of things moving forwards and progressing. Binge
season two in one go - totally different experience. "We will answer every question some day,
when it's ready!"

Pact Fleet being blown up is quite the cliffhanger. Lots more going on behind that. They were the
world story that was developing. How do we build up Camp Resolve and breath life into it? All the
races contributing. Military build-up tied into Silverwastes. How Trahearne comes back into the
story and recognising the player's role in the Pact. Had time to build up Destiny's Edge 2.0 so
that they could hold their own in scenes with (legendary) Destiny's Edge. "Certainly have fewer
ships now." Colin said that it's one of the best cinematics that they've ever produced.

]]>Fri, 16 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/points-of-interest-jan-16
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/points-of-interest-jan-16The Daily ShowFollowing an announcement out of the blue this time last week, ArenaNet released their new
‘content–driven’ daily achievements system yesterday as part of a patch that brought back the
Wintersday holiday festival. I’ve been excited to try it out and have to say that after
completing my first day of achievements that I'm very happy with the changes.

Day one: 12/12

I tend to be predominantly a PvE player, which means
that with the old daily achievements system I would find the five quickest to complete, grind them
out in whatever zone I tended to be inhabiting (pretty much Dry Top or Silverwastes) just because,
and then go and do something else. The rewards were adequate, but hardly exciting. Last night, I
completed all 12 daily achievements open to me, plus the 5 Wintersday dailies, had a blast, and
walked away with bags and bags of rewards.

In doing so, I believe that the rationale for this unexpected overhaul became very clear and quite
possibly proved itself already. I was drawn out of my usual bubble of (in)activity and taken to
parts of Tyria that I've not been back to since getting 100% world completion. I took my relatively
untouched level 80 Thief into PvP, slapped on a build from MetaBattle which seemed to fit the
way I’d like to play, and had an interesting (if not hugely) successful couple of matches. I went to
the Aurora Glade borderlands, joined up with a zerg, and had a great time capturing camps and keeps.

This is all content that I could’ve been playing before, of course, but the improved rewards and
variety already feel like a better motivator for me to get involved on a more regular basis. With
the old system, once you got your 5 quests completed for a day, each subsequent achievement meant
a single achievement point. Now, I get reward track progress in PvP and badges of honor in WvW.
Given that these are not modes that I play the majority of the time (at the moment, anyway) these
extra little boosts are just the ticket to augment my progression. It remains to be seen if I’ll
eventually get bored of doing this every day and just finish 3 or 4 PvE achievements before doing
something else, but I’m optimistic that I can keep it going.

Not everyone likes it

What you’ve probably gathered so far is that for my personal playstyle and involvement with the
game, this new daily system is just the shot in the arm that was needed. Other players, of course,
do things in their own ways, and for some of them the changes are not so welcome. I’m still
reading around and finding opinions, but here are a few concerns that I’ve seen raised so far:

I don't have an engineer, I don't have a free slot, and I’m sure as hell not going to delete a
toon to make one. So don’t force me to get kills with one to complete the pvp achievement.

I can absolutely understand how this might be a problem, and given that there are 8 professions
and only 5 character slots by default it’s conceivable that you might get two daily achievements
for professions that you don’t have, which would render you completely unable to get 3/4 for that
game type.

I’m not upset that they changed the system around, I’m upset that the new PvE achievements that
I’ve seen are annoyingly specific, like “go to this ONE location at this ONE time of day and do
this ONE task” rather than “do any of dozens of possible tasks wherever you like”

This is something that I have absolutely no problem with. Take the achievement yesterday to harvest
4 plants in one of 5 listed Maguuma zones. That cost me maybe 5 silver total in waypoint fees, took
2 minutes to complete, and rewarded me with a chest that gave me 10 plants and a couple of
Wintersday presents and an XP scroll. On top of that, it reminded me that Sparkfly Fen is a really
nice looking zone, so I stayed for another 10 minutes running around to do some mining and logging.
If I hadn’t completed the zone, maybe I’d stay there and snag a heart quest or missing waypoint.
We have this massive game world, and I definitely can’t fault ArenaNet for trying to incentivise
players to actually go out and explore more than just the most recently released living world zone.

@blacklionchest the only thing I noticed was events were hard to get tags on in queensdale this morning with the crowds.

I saw some people mentioning this in map chat for sure, but didn’t have any problems with it myself.
Over time I think that we’ll see some common knowledge come about regarding events in zones which
last long enough for everyone to easily get credit. I made use of the event tracking satnav to point
me in the right direction, which helped greatly, although this would likely be less effective if I
hadn’t finished everything else in the zone. I tried to get credit on events and then move along to
let others in to complete them; you don’t need a gold medal for every event for it to count towards
the daily achievement. This is also exacerbated by the fact that it’s a low–level zone in which lv80
characters can one–shot kill most enemies. Higher level zones are highly unlikely to suffer anything
like as much.

@blacklionchest I have to do stuff I don't usually do and this is especially the case in WvW. They ask me to cap a tower & keep..

I had a longer conversation with everyone’s favourite roaming engineer badass Wolfineer (take
a look at his site for all things engineer) and it’s the potential issue that has given me the
most pause for thought about the new system so far. His argument, essentially, is that he should be
able to complete the daily meta achievement (i.e. any 3 achievements across the PvE, PvP and WvW)
without needing to step out of his chosen role within the game. That role is predominantly roaming
in WvW, flipping camps, taking sentries, and killing other roaming players and zerg stragglers.

Looking at a list of data–mined daily achievements, it looks to me like there are potentially
enough viable options, but you’re then left hoping that you get the right configuration that makes
it possible to finish the meta without either having to branch out into other facets of WvW, or
into other game types entirely. Is it unreasonable to expect that you should be able to complete
the meta within a single game type? I’m not sure. Roaming in WvW plays a specific and important
role, definitely, but I don’t think that it’s the worst thing to break off from that and tag along
with a zerg to grab a couple of towers, or to hop out of the Mists to do daily gatherer somewhere.

Day 2: ???

This new system marks a definite shift away from ‘passive’ dailies that you tick off as you go about
your regular business, towards ‘active’ tasks that you might need to specifically go after. As a
Guild Wars generalist, this totally works for me. I’m happy to go exploring, and need that
encouragement to jump into PvP and WvW more often. What is becoming apparent is that this change
does mean a period of adjustment for others who are very happy with their own ‘small’ part of the
game.

Will we see more changes from ArenaNet? Almost certainly. They’ve shown again and again this
year that they’re listening to the community feedback and making changes as necessary. They approach
game development with an agile methodology (Josh Foreman took great delight in the most
recent Points of Interest in explaining how the Skritt in the new Silverwastes area spout agile
buzzwords) and part of that tends to mean releasing features and then iterating until they’re just
right. This often means that the first version of a feature that is released might have some
rough edges which need smoothing off, but they have a track record for doing that swiftly. I have
enough faith in ArenaNet now that I don’t let myself get upset about changes to the game. I trust
them to work with the community to get things into a state that supports their vision, whilst at the
same time not needlessly making players unhappy.

Now, I’d better get back to those dailies…

]]>Wed, 17 Dec 2014 00:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/the-daily-show
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/the-daily-showNew player experienceThe new player experience, introduced with the second feature pack—to a decidedly mixed
reaction—has been around for a while now. Since then, I took my final profession, a ranger, to
level 80 on my EU account, and am in the process of levelling up a shiny new engineer on my
recently purchased NA account; I’ve got friends on both side of the great ArenaNet Atlantic server
divide, and took advantage of the current off 50% sale to finally double my investment. This has
given me the somewhat unique experience of being able to try the
NPE changes with and without account–wide unlocks.
Below are my thoughts on various aspects of the updated levelling process, and some suggestions for
small tweaks that could be made to, in my opinion, improve it even further for new players and
veterans alike.

Unlocks

The biggest change is the way in which certain functionality is now gated by your character’s level,
with WvW becoming available at 18 and PvP at 22. Weapon, utility, and elite skills are unlocked at
a steady pace between 3 and 30, along with other game mechanics including rallying, skill points,
vistas, points of interest, and map completion. Full details can be found on the wiki.

I didn’t find this change to be particularly detrimental. Along with the shiny new splash
screen that appears when you level up, it does a good job in spreading out the otherwise potentially
overwhelming torrent of game mechanics and information for new players, or those less familiar with
the MMO genre. Having to wait for skill points to be unlocked, despite coming across them in the
world, is slightly frustrating, but since you don't have any utility slots unlocked at that point,
it’s mostly a moot point and requires the slightest amount of backtracking.

One change that I do particularly like is the new pacing of your character’s personal story: it now
unlocks as bespoke chapters every 10 levels. This makes the personal story more episodic, in line
with the way in which we’ve gotten living story updates since the start of season one. It also
serves to spread out the personal story, giving you a good block of content that is tailored to your
current level, and then releasing you back out into the world to explore and work on zone
completion.

Some parts of the story have been removed in order to streamline this
chapter–based approach, and I’ve seen some folks suggesting that this harms the narrative in some quite
major ways. I didn’t really notice any glaring omissions; conversely, I actually found myself enjoying
the story that bit more because it felt shorter and more direct. This is definitely something that could work
well for newer players who are now in the position that they have a wealth of content to play when they hit
lv80, with all of living story season two to unlock and play through.

Rewards

As you gain experience and levels under the new system, you’ll find yourself being rewarded
for your efforts. Bags of crafting materials are very welcome and help to keep your stocks of
materials like blood and totems up. The biggest improvement are the rare armour pieces that you
now get as rewards for personal story quests which let you choose the stats that you want. These
have enabled me to effectively stop gearing up by going to the trading post every 5 levels, saving me
money for unlocking traits (more on that below). Not only do these new items keep your
stats up–to–date, but they throw in some cultural skins to get your wardrobe started. The only downside
to speak of is that these rares (and later exotics) are not able to be salvaged or sold, meaning that
the only way to get rid of them is to destroy them, which feels like a waste.

In addition to these quest rewards, new crafting recipes were added that produce account–bound armour
and weapons with very powerful stats. I crafted a few pieces for one character, but they’re very
expensive—requiring ectos, amongst other things—and only worth using if you intend to reuse them on multiple
alts. Levelling my new engineer, I certainly haven’t felt that I was lacking power or survivability at any
point: these are definitely luxury items. It might be nice, however, if they were available through some
way other than crafting. Perhaps if you could buy them with karma or WvW badges they would make more sense.

Traits

And so we finally get to the only part of the new player experience that still doesn’t quite work for me:
traits. Introduced priot to the second feature pack, the way that traits are unlocked
was changed based on community feedback. Players now have the option of completing feats throughout the world,
or paying a combination of skill points and coins. While I generally end up unlocking some traits organically
while levelling, they’re almost never the ones I actually want to use. Those traits are, invariably, tied to
areas that I’ve not yet explored, or that are far above my current level. This is annoying, and has led me to
almost entirely forego this new system in favour of using cold hard cash.

The biggest frustration with this is that often when I’m awarded traits points with the new system, I won’t
be able to immediately equip my preferred choice. This deadens the impact of gaining the trait points in
the first place, and defers the perceived power increase until such a time as I get my arse back to a
profession trainer to part with money and skill points.

All that said, I believe that one small change could be made that would go a long way to improving the system.
How about giving the player one free trait of their choice for each trait point that is awarded? It would
allow players who are working towards a specific build to go straight for that trait without needing to go
halfway across Tyria. This would restore the immediate feeling of getting more powerful—something which the
new system seems to focus on—but would retain the necessity for players to unlock the
remaining traits through either method when they want to change their build up. Used tactically, it would
also allow veteran players, who know how each trait is unlocked, to choose the time–consuming or frustrating
unlocks as their freebies. Would it be unfair to existing players who have spent time and money to unlock
traits? Possibly, but I would strongly expect a change like this to be welcomed universally. Furthermore,
giving away only 14 out of 65 trait unlocks for free doesn’t, in my opinion, undermine the system.
I struggle to see any downsides. What do you think?

It’s with great pleasure that I’d like to present you with the first guest post on Black Lion
Chest. I met Ed, aka Screenag3r, at EGX London and got the impression very quickly that
he’s someone who enjoys Guild Wars 2 as much as I do. This post is his take on the prospect of
raiding being added to the game. I discussed it recently, and think that Ed brings some
very interesting points, so keep reading, and let us know what you think!—Kriss

Playing video games is far from a solitary experience now. The prevalence and power of technology
allows all of us to leap into an alien world or siege an ancient castle with allies from around the
world. Until recently the Massive Multiplayer Online Role Play Game was unique in the multiplayer
experience, gathering hordes of players to take on the darkest depths of the raid. Raids in the
most generic terminology are accepted to be large scale, instanced encounters, requiring multiple
groups of co–operative players to complete. This isn’t the sort of thing you just log into and go.
Raids are big, very difficult and chaotic.

World of Warcraft has presented raid content as a core part of the MMORPG genre for years, with the
new Mythic raid representing the current top tier of achievement. Blizzard has always set the
expectations that other MMORPG raids are held to through constant update and iteration. Despite
this, games like Destiny have been introducing raids in new and innovative formats outside the
usual habitat of the MMORPG. While raids get larger and more ubiquitous across gaming is there any
reason a studio wouldn’t include raid content in an existing MMORPG?

Tequatl the Sunless – The dawn of raiding in Guild Wars 2?

Guild Wars 2 marked a 2 year milestone during August 2014 and has spent this time entertaining
players without raids. Players in Tyria can still chase down monsters in dungeon instances,
Fractals and even out in the open world. One of the most intense update schedules seen in western
MMO history provides unprecedented amounts of content for players to experience. When ArenaNet
produced the Tequatl Rising update a rejuvenated dragon spawned in Sparkfly Fen and with it
the same competitive approach raiding brings to other MMORPG. Tequatl’s reign of newly tweaked
terror rallied servers to claim the glory of a world first kill. Blackgate server walked away
with the glory and spoils of the kill less than a day after Tequatl touched down. The time Tequatl
stood for may be unimpressive but it proved competitive PvE content can exist in Guild Wars 2 with
or without raids.

Tequatl is not the only instance of open world encounters fulfilling a raiding role. The Twisted
Marionette introduced during The Origins of Madness saga set players against a clockwork
monstrosity that dwarfs the games original dungeon bosses. The scale of the encounter relied on
huge numbers of players all acting in unison to dismantle the chains strangling the Shiverpeaks.
Failure of any of the Marionette’s many multiple constituent parts could result in the entire map
falling under the heel of the monstrosity Scarlet unleashed. The complexity of this Twisted
Marionette provided the kind if co–ordinated challenge found in raids and proved it has a place in
Guild Wars 2.

Open world encounters with a certain level of complexity and challenge might approximate the level
of difficulty involved in raiding but that doesn’t mean that Tyria is necessarily ready for raids
quite yet. Traditionally raids end with one thing, epic loot. Rewards from raiding are a reflection
of the amount of effort involved in getting through huge challenges. For a number of MMO games
his level of reward signals the start of the dreaded gear grind. The process of completing the
most challenging content repeatedly in order to get a chance to obtain the best of the best gear is
a classic progression model. This vertical gear progression that tends to be synonymous with
raiding simply does not fit Guild Wars 2. Creating a balanced reward structure is one of the major
hurdles to introducing raid content in Guild Wars 2.

Rewards for dungeons, open world events, WvW, and Living World events are all primarily cosmetic in
nature. Random equipment will drop but is not locked to particular content. At the core, Guild Wars
2 supports a large breadth of cosmetic rewards while avoiding horizontal progression as much as
possible. This is a game that tries to let players play how they want and not how they are expected
to.

Creating rewards that incentivise players to enter a raid instance, committing time and resources
for a chance to triumph is going to be a major obstacle for the designers at ArenaNet. Players will
compete for glory but only for so long. Tequatl still draws players but no more than other dragons
while the Fractals feel as disconnected to a players overall game experience as the Mistlock
Observatory is to the world of Tyria. The lure of conquering the same content will reasonably wane
over time and this atrophy is part of what makes the gear grind such an effective motivator in
other games. Without incentivising raids appropriately the team at ArenaNet run the risk of
releasing content that simply gets lost in the mists.

The Mistlock Observatory – Empty and desolate for some players. Will raiding end up like this?

Introducing the apex of PvE content is a tempting step, especially as it is so intrinsic to the
core of many other MMORPGs. Guild Wars 2 has already delivered challenges that would not look out
of place in any raid in Azeroth and players repeatedly conquered them. Tequatl was thwarted and
Zhaitan is long banished but are raids the correct step right for Tyria just yet? Without the
traditional vertical progression systems, that are integral to many implementations of raiding
content, caution needs to be utilised before introducing raiding for the sake of all of heroes of
Tyria.

]]>Thu, 23 Oct 2014 23:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/are-raids-the-right-path
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/are-raids-the-right-pathThat’s flippin’ teamworkThis lunch time I hopped onto my lv65 ranger to do a spot of leveling in
Sparkfly Fen, and saw a couple of people talking in map chat about the fact
that Tequatl was due to spawn shortly. I made my way over and found a few
people tagged up and explaining the key parts of the encounter for anyone
who didn't know it already. Sure enough, the fight started and everyone did
what they were supposed to. Map chat was largely free of antagonising, and
with five minutes to spare we killed the dragon and collected our loot.

It’s not the first time that I’ve completed this fight in a non–pre made group,
but continues to surprise and impress me. Sure, it's been out long enough
that most people should know what they’re doing by now, but it nevertheless
takes coordination, and can go wrong quickly if people don't do what they’re
supposed to. It makes me really happy to see this sort of team play coming
together organically, and has always been one of the stand–out things about
Guild Wars 2. Long may it continue!

]]>Sun, 12 Oct 2014 23:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/thats-flippin-teamwork
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/thats-flippin-teamworkGuild raidsArenaNet Studio Design Director, Chris Whiteside, announced on the official forums that there
will be a CDI on the subject of
guild raiding, backing up assumptions that were already being made in the community based on a new
Game Designer: Raid Content job posting that appeared on their site this week. This, of
course, has everybody scrambling to discuss how they think that they should be implemented, if at
all.

Raiding isn’t something that I necessarily expected to eventually come to Guild Wars 2, but I’m
definitely in the camp that feel that it could be a very positive move. My MMO history includes a
lot of raiding in World of Warcraft, from release through to Wrath of the Lich King, and some of my
very best memories (and friends) come from those experiences. Sure, there are a lot of not so
good memories, mostly on kill–less ‘progress’ nights, but that was seen as a necessary evil for the
eventual pay–off that was killing bosses and (hopefully) getting some fat loot.

Tequatl the Sunless, the first world boss to get the ‘actually quite difficult’ treatment

We already have large–scale bosses by way of the revamped Tequatl and the Great Jungle Wurms, and
while these are more–or–less enjoyable, the fact that they exist in the open world does inevitably
introduce difficulties. The design decision has always been that these events should be visible to
everyone not only so that anyone can join in, but so that less experienced players could stumble
upon a group of players trying to take down some enormous beast, which makes Tyria look totally
badass. Before megaservers were introduced organised guilds worked hard to manipulate the overflow
system in order to create a ‘clean’ overflow with only guild members in it. This became more
difficult to achieve with the megaserver system implementation and world bosses being put on a set
timetable, but there were some concessions made by allowing guilds to trigger a boss encounter at a
time of their choosing.

Do we need raiding?

If, as we’re currently lead to suspect, there is to be a shift in design principles on the cards by
allowing guilds to tackle boss encounters behind closed doors, it could be an indication that ArenaNet
is trying to draw in new or returning players; those who may have avoided Guild Wars 2 because of the
lack of strong PvE end–game, or those who have left the game due to the same perceived shortcomings.

In most games, the classic reason for completing raid content is to progress to the next step on the
gear treadmill (a phrase commonly used to denote armor and weapons becoming obsolete with each major
release, to be replaced with newly added items with higher stats). The highest level of gear in Guild
Wars 2 is ascended, which only offers around a 5% improvement over readily available exotic items. I
would be surprised to see ascended displaced any time soon, which suggests that the main reasons for
confronting guild raids would be similar to those for taking on Tequatl or the Jungle Wurms:

the challenge of figuring out how to beat it

having fun working together within a community

a rare chance for ascended items

unique skins

unique achievements

How would they work?

Guilds come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s likely that any new guild raiding system would have to
be one–size–fits–all, potentially scaling from 10 players up to 50, or even more. It was always painful
being left on the bench for raid night because I was number 41 for a 40–man group, but it’s likely
that ArenaNet would want to implement some kind of capping (as opposed to open world bosses that often involve
all 150 players in a single overflow instance). This would be done in order to allow the encounters and
mechanics to be more tightly designed: something which works well and is fun for 20 people might suck
if you try to scale it up to work for 120 people. That said, the idea of having to potentially exclude
some members of the guild from joining in doesn’t really sit well with what I interpret to be ArenaNet’s
design philosophy, so this is likely to be a subject which is hotly discussed when the topic opens for
discussion on the forums.

Ragnaros the Firelord, from World of Warcraft. You have awakened him too soon!

With regards to the in–game technicalities of how raids might fit in, I imagine that we’ll be looking at
fully instanced raids, potentially activated in the same way as existing guild missions (as possibly linked
to some form of guild housing system). Whether these raids will tie in with in–game canon, or whether
they’ll be incorporated as some kind of ‘challenge’ arena is yet to be seen. Will they be long explorable
dungeons in the vein of Molten Core with multiple bosses, or ‘straight to the point’ single boss kills
like Onyxia? No idea, but in an ideal world (for me) I think we’d have access to both.

Is this the right move for Guild Wars 2?

In short: I think so, yes. With the lack of a gear treadmill, players won’t feel compelled to seek
out raid content in order to keep up with the best gear on offer, and as such won’t fall behind if they
choose not to participate. Those of us with raiding backgrounds should relish the idea of ArenaNet
creating engaging and challenging large–scale PvE content, something which has definitely been lacking
since release, despite the addition of Fractals. There are definitely a lot of undesirable aspects that
can creep into the community when hardcore raiding is a focus, but I believe that the fact that they would
likely be pitched as an optional side–attraction and not the only end–game option available to players
would go some way to prevent that from developing.

]]>Sun, 05 Oct 2014 23:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/guild-raids
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/guild-raidsNew outfitsEveryone’s favourite data–miner and bane of developers everywhere,
that_shaman, has been at it again, uncovering a handful of unreleased
outfits to the game’s data files in recent patches.

First off are the Raiment of the Lich, a Halloween costume from Guild
Wars 1, and presumably due to be added to the gemstore when the Mad King decides
to show his ugly mug again.

Raiment of the Lich

Next is a commando–style costume, perfect for trekking through the Maguuma
Wastes, crag–hopping in Dry Top, and (apparently) breaking immersion.

I think that they all look awesome, and can’t wait to try them out in–game.
I’m a big fan of outfits, very much appreciating the way that they enable me
to have a stylish and consistent appearance on low–level characters without
the need to continually spend gems on transmute charges.

There has been a lot of criticism of the decision to add so many new looks to
the game as single item outfits as opposed to multiple armor pieces which can
be mixed and matched to create unique appearances. I totally get this, but
think that there are a couple of factors to consider.

There are new armor skins on the way

‘Before you all grab your pitchforks and start complaining
“oh noes outfit” like last the time I’ve tried to post something… do keep in
mind that this (and the previous) patch also added a substantial amount of
armor models but those are much harder for me to render’ — that_shaman

Outfits are (probably) quicker to create

I don’t have any experience of 3D modelling and I’m sure as heck not a visual
artist, but I do know about software. It stands to reason, I think, that a single
slot outfit is likely to have fewer clipping issues than a new six–item armor set
which could be combined with any already existing piece of armor. ShiverpeakOwl
on Twitter makes the good point that there are already clipping issues in the game,
but I don’t think that ArenaNet would be doing themselves any favours in terms of
public perception or technical debt (what we call the long list of ‘shit that I need
to fix one day’) by releasing skins that they know have clipping issues.

Something is better than nothing

Following on from my previous assumption that outfits are generally easier for ANet
to create and release, I would prefer to have them in the gem store than not have them.
Of course, I would love to see a swathe of new armor skins added to the wardrobe, and I
believe that they will before too long. My preference would actually be to see some new
skins added to the open world and as non–ascended crafting recipes, but I expect that
we’ll be waiting for an expansion for that to happen.

In the mean time, buy these new outfits if you like them (or not, if you don’t) when
they’re released, get creative with dyes, and try to make your characters look awesome.
I can’t wait to see what people come up with.

]]>Thu, 02 Oct 2014 23:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/new-outfits
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/new-outfitsAppreciationThe latest episode of Points of Interest,
while not offering up any new information for veteran players, made me take a
moment and appreciate a lot of the things that make Guild Wars 2 a special game
that I often take for granted. For me, it comes down to two main things: you
don’t have to be a dick to other people, and you're not penalised for playing
something else.

Keep it to yourself

Allow me to break down that first point. As highlighted in the livestream,
gathering nodes are individual and not a contest, everyone involved in killing
an enemy gets credit, and no–one is competing for loot drops. Having that aspect
of “I can do my own thing without having to screw anyone over” goes a long way
to developing a friendly in–game community. This is amplified by the ‘emergent
gameplay’ created by dynamic group events, and the megaserver technology that
underpins everything, attempting to put you in the same place as friends and
guildmates, which worked brilliantly when Dry Top was introduced.

Playing around

So, playing other games. I must admit that I haven’t played Guild Wars regularly
for a few weeks now. I had a blast playing the first half of this living world
season and eagerly await the next half, but the second feature pack didn't
contain anything that particularly appealed to me. Thing is, that’s totally
cool. No problem. These days, all that ArenaNet actually require of me
is to login at least once every couple of weeks (once the living story is up and
running again), and even then that’s just to save myself some gems. None of the
time–gated content (laurels, ascended materials) are so crucial that I can’t
afford to skip a day (or thirty). The lack of the traditional gear treadmill is
another thing that we probably take for granted two years in, but means that I
don't have palpitations thinking about falling behind the curve if I happen to
miss content.

Call me a filthy casual, but this absolutely suits the way that I play games
now. I’ve had my fair share of 6 hour raid nights, coerced by increasingly
frustrated leaders on voice comms trying to get tired players to stick around
for just one more try on progression night, but having a family put paid to
that (I'm not complaining!). Not only that, but I have a stack of other games
piling up that I never get around to playing when I’m in full–blown GW2 mode.
Lately, I’ve been hitting up Battle.net (Sayana#1207, add me) for Hearthstone
and the new Diablo 3 expansion, Reaper of Souls, not to mention Kickstarted
games Shadowrun: Dragonfall Director’s Cut and Wasteland 2. Guild Wars 2 lets
me get away with a little digital infidelity without heavily penalising me, and
that works for me, and very much keeps me coming back in the end.

Feedback

The most discussed facet of the second feature pack is definitely the new player
experience. Conversation has been wide–ranging, and vitriolic. It turned out
that much of the initial criticism was based on unintentional changes, which
were fixed quickly. From where I’m sitting, I would say that there are aspects
of the NPE that I like, and some that I’m not so fond of, but I can understand
the rationale behind the decisions. I spent some time at EGX London this week and saw a lot of completely new players
working through the first few levels of hastily created characters, and the
staggered introduction to game mechanics definitely seemed… kinder, than being
thrown straight in. Time will tell what further tweaks are made to the system,
but that isn’t really what I wanted to focus on.

It should go without saying, but here it is: the developers aren’t trying to
piss you off. For the most part, they’re gamers too. They want to make cool shit
for all of us. This reasoning, and a background in software development, leads
me to conclude that if something that I deem to be an obviously good thing isn’t
in the game already, like markers in Dry Top to show you which coins you already
collected, it’s either in the works, or is technically harder than it sounds.

Design by committee doesn’t work. Feedback is roundly a useful thing for our
community to engage in, but try to make it well–formed, constructive, and based
on your personal experience of the game as opposed to hearsay. If you’re angry
about changes or features that you feel are missing, try to get to the core of
what your point is, and communicate that. In the long run, it’s going to be a
lot more effective than shit–slinging.

]]>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 23:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/appreciation
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/appreciationDragons Reach, Part 2The fourth episode in this season of the living world, Dragon's Reach, Part 2 is very much a return to form after a couple of fairly average set-up releases. We lead a summit of Tyria's leaders in an attempt to determine a plan of action, aiming to take the fight to the elder dragon Mordremoth. This, of course, does not go unnoticed, and we end up defending a weakened Pale Tree against a Shadow of Mordremoth, and finally, receive a crystal-laden vision of what is to come.

There is some excellent dialogue in this episode, with the exchanges between Countess Anise and Canach particularly worthy of recognition. I'm intrigued to see where the story takes these two characters, but they've been very much thrust into the foreground now and will be the subject of intense speculation and conspiracy theories between now and episode five. For my part, I definitely get the impression that Anise is the real power in Divinity's Reach, but am no closer to determining her end-game, and whether or not it's going to be for good or ill. In this release, Anise is clearly manipulating Kasmeer with promises of redemption, and admits to Canach that she is grooming him as her personal agent, which only goes to reinforce the idea that there is an awful lot more to her than meets the eye, and even more that she's not telling us.

I'm glad to be back in personal story instances for this release, and find it to be a much better fit for this style of story-telling, compared to the open world events that we saw in the Iron Marches for Dragon's Reach, Part 1. By encapsulating the story progression in my own private little bubble, I can choose how to take it all in. I can take my time and listen to every snippet of dialogue, which is particularly important given that we know that everything can have significance and point towards future events. I can take friends in with me, if I want, but can choose not to if I'd rather experience events with my character as the sole protagonist. If the new enemies that I'm facing have interesting mechanics that make the fight more difficult, I can spend time working those out instead of being forced to get as many hits in as possible during a mass zerg and then being left wondering quite what happened. I have no doubt that we'll continue to see a mix of open world and instanced content as part of the living world, and this is definitely the correct approach given the fact that we all want to see the world of Tyria evolve around us, but ArenaNet need to make sure that they're making the right judgement when they determine which tool they're going to use to deliver us an engaging and challenging story.

The Phoenix Wright influence in the first story instance, Party Politics (aka Turnabout Divinity's Reach), was really fun and very well executed. The necessity to repeat the instance four times in total to get all of the achievements. however, started to wear a little thin towards the end. There is a suspicion that this is actually a bug and that it should be possible to do 'Sneaky Sleuth' and 'Super Sleuth' at the same time. As mentioned up top, Canach has some excellent lines, explaining how he's plotting how to kill all of the preening human nobles. That Sylvari is my kind of dude.

Update: The musically gifted Leif Chappelle is responsible for the Ace Attourney schtick… good job!

Taimi was getting a really hard time from Councillor Phlunt, a member of the Asuran Arcane Council, and I greatly enjoyed her back-chat and eventual escape with her waypoint reconfigurator. He's gone firmly to the top of everyone's 'this guy is a douchebag' list and is another character whose motives are decidedly supect. I don't trust for one second that he's a suitable guardian for Taimi's creations and wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out that he betrays us in favour of the Inquest, whose own motivations have not been made particularly clear so far in this season of the living story, despite significant involvement. It was good to see that the damage to Scruffy was only temporary, but I'm eagerly awaiting the day that Taimi rides into battle on Braham's shoulder, guns blazing and cackling manically (not unlike a scene in a certain recent movie release). ArenaNet: get to work!

The main event of this episode is an impressive procession in the Grove, where we see the recently recruited leaders of Tyria assemble for a summit chaired by the Pale Tree herself. This, for me, is where the dialogue fell down slightly; each leader rehashing why they were reluctant to take the threat of Mordremoth seriously. Things picked up, however, when the party was crashed by Mordrem, including a massive shadow dragon champion. Everyone escapes, we have a kick-ass solo boss battle, and then tend to a weakened Pale Tree. She'll live, it seems, and bestows upon us a vision which hints at where the story will head next. I've got my suspicions about what it all means and eagerly await the inevitable speculation videos from the likes of WoodenPotatoes. Afterwards, Anise sends Canach off to Fort Trinity with Trahearne, who suggests that there had to be someone on the inside that brought Mordremoth's minions to the Grove. At this point we really don't know anything, but I can't wait to see what comes next.

We've had Dry Top for six weeks now and I have to say that it's still a lot of fun; I've barely been anywhere else. The rewards are only so-so, but I find it an enjoyable place to run around doing my dailies. My luck in opening buried chests during the hourly sandstorm has been absolutely terrible: I haven't had a single fossil yet, but that actually doesn't worry me too much. I've not yet seen a T5/T6 instance, but have had a couple of fun organised attempts with my guild that have come close. Pretty much the only criticism that I'd level at the moment would be to say that Sand Giant, while looking totally badass, probably needs to either be nerfed slightly or have the rewards for taking him down improved. It just takes too long, and I've not seen a single kill since the day of the patch that unlocked that part of Dry Top.

The last thing that I wanted to mention is the new grow-your-own backpiece that was started in episode three and continued with this release. I haven't started it yet, largely due to the fact that I lack the required crafting skills, but think that the approach ArenaNet is taking with it is very clever indeed. You receive the starting items as rewards for completing the story instances, which encourages people to keep up with the living world, and in this case has allowed them to spread a single reward out over multiple releases. Working out what to do with these items is, at least for the first couple of hours, a game of discovery, and even when every step is documented by you know who it still results in a wide-ranging scavenger hunt which takes players to corners of the world that they wouldn't normally go to. I can see this approach being used extensively for powerful or important rewards in the future and like it very much as an alternative to RNG or the gem store.

]]>Tue, 12 Aug 2014 23:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/dragons-reach-part-two
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/dragons-reach-part-twoSeason two, episode oneSeason two is finally here, and I'm really happy with it. It took around an hour for me and a friend to work through the new story quests (for the first time) and I found it to be both engaging and challenging. There's definitely been an improvement in the quality of the dialogue between the biconics and I loved the Braham/Rox/Taimi banter. Some of the couplesy chat between Marjory and Kas got a little cringey, but I can live with it and expect to see that naturally take a backseat when the serious ass–kicking continues. One aspect which really stood out to me was the use of profession–based abilities. Majory pulls up a bone bridge so that Kasmeer can cross a chasm and drop a portal for us to use. Super cool, and something that I would love to see more of. It felt like the new emphasis put on conducting story elements inside instanced quests is really allowing the writers to play around a lot more, and I'm impressed. Keep it up!

I won't go into too much detail on story specifics since everyone ought to stop what they're doing and to go and play it for themselves, but I thought that the pursuit and eventual battle with Aerin was well designed and something I look forward to repeating both to unlock achievements and because it was just a ton of fun. I haven't completed any of the harder achievements at the time of writing, but I'm a fan of the new direction they're taking, and in combination with the new 'Regions' category in the achievement panel that houses some of the more exploration–rewarding tasks, I think that it's going to be one of the most welcome changes in season two. I was happy to start filling out the backstory for a recently vanquished foe and am already intrigued to see how that story thread will unfurl.

We finally got a new zone to play in: Dry Top. I love the verticality of the zone, and having access to the Zephyrite movement skills fills me with joy. We have, in effect, a permanent Labyrinthine Cliffs, complete with scavenger hunts and perilous diving boards. The spot underneath the jumping puzzle was constantly littered with corpses, myself included, and was roundly hilarious. I'm going to start standing there and charging for ressing the defeated. The way in which environmental effects have been used to affect broad changes on the are really interesting. I'm sent scrabbling around for buried locked chests every time as soon as the sandstorm hits, and think that these kinds of features will be used to even greater effect in future zones. The existing areas in Tyria and utterly beautiful to look at and lots of fun to explore, and I think that what we're seeing in Dry Top is a clear sign of the maturity that is being applied to zone design as we go forward.

Maclaine Diemer's new compositions for Dry Top are superb and really capture the atmosphere of the barren landscape and swirling sands. I can't wait to hear what else he and Leif Chappelle have in store for us.

Tilion of Dragon Season pointed out this morning something that I'd noticed last night but not really processed:

Is it just me or Megaservers work properly after yesterday's patch? It's so much fun playing with the entire guild in Dry Top. ~Tilion

Dry Top really shows off why the megaserver system is so great. Everywhere I turned there was an orange name and a friendly face, and it really made a big difference. My schedule doesn't allow me to get along to guild missions very often, so it was excellent to be able to organically party up and complete story quests and events together. I can see this really adding to the impact of each new story episode, particularly where new zones are involved.

In summary, I bought into the pre–season hype and wasn't let down. The story quests took a good amount of time to complete and I think that I'll spend a good amount of time over the next fornight going back to unlock all of the achievements and to dig up the various rewards. Bring on episode two!

]]>Tue, 01 Jul 2014 23:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/season-two-episode-one
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/season-two-episode-oneIn the interimLots has been said by the community about the changes introduced in the April feature pack and the end of season one of the Living World. I'd like to take this opportunity to talk about a few of the things that I've been doing since, and what I'm hoping to see in the future for Guild Wars.

The levelling process was changed to spread out the awarding of trait points, and on my new Elementalist, the pacing of 1–60 (as far as I've gotten) has felt about right. There's been no need to worry about which build to use, instead keeping the focus on trying out the different weapons available and choosing slot skills which fit my preferred playstyle. I also really, really enjoy the new impetus introduced by the Wardrobe and transmutation changes to check completed heart vendors for locked skins.

I bought my first outfits from the gem store and predominantly use them for pre–lv80 characters since I'm unlikely to ever use transmutation charges on equipment which will be replaced within a few levels. I would love to see an increase in the number of available outfits, including a 'basic' getup for each Order made available through the personal story when you choose who to join.

The reintroduction of Zephyr Sanctum and the Queen's Jubilee content has been fun. The changes made to Boss Blitz are a big improvement on last year, and the balancing that has been done since then to the bronze tier made a lot of sense. I've been wracking my brain to figure out better ways to get non–organised players following what are fairly basic strategies. The situation might be helped by giving PvE commanders better tools to help people understand what they need to do without resorting to shouting in map chat, but there's no guarentee that players will listen. It shouldn't be too big an issue, as long as organised groups have a way into these events, and the rewards are balanced correctly for time taken and skill demonstrated.

The Zephyr Sanctum is a lovely zone to run around and explore, but it hasn't held my attention all that well, which is part of why I've (yet again) found myself levelling up another character instead. I'll probably push to finish some of the new achievements before July 1st, but it makes me even more confident that the move in season two to give meta rewards after completing the story component of a patch and then unlocking achievements will be a good fit.

The new Black Lion Chest UI is really nice, and has the desired affect of making me want to buy more keys so that I can keep clicking. I've had to log off a couple of times to stop myself splurging on the gem store, because I know for sure that I won't get anything good. The meta–game that is keyfarming is surprisingly enjoyable alternative, although I've probably only done 10 runs with very little by way of meaningful reward.

Hopes for season two

The most in demand feature, and one it looks like we'll be getting on July 1st, are new zones. My hope is that these new zones are 'complete', with hearts, dynamic events, points of interest, and vistas. While Southsun Cove was permanently added during season one, it's never felt like a fully realised zone, and there's very little reason to go there. Hopefully ArenaNet aren't shying away from creating new fully–realised zones because of inflating the task of 100% world completion. To my mind, as the world grows bigger with time, it should take longer to fully explore.

I've seen a lot of disappointment with the storyline of season one, which I think is unfair. It was slow to start, but finished very strongly and had some great moments, while ArenaNet were very open with us in saying that they were constantly refining what the Living World was supposed to be, and how they would deliver it to us. They've continued in this way with the news about the big changes to the way in which season two will be delivered through the journal, and I can't wait to see how that works out. I'd love to see them dive into this next story arc with the same verve and interest that concluded the last one, keeping events at a reasonable tempo and taking us deeper into the lore. I would really like to see an improvement in the dialogue between characters, too, as this has often been a little weak (Braham and Rox, I'm looking at you).

I only really enjoy group content when done with guildmates, which isn't always possible and tends to take some organising. As such, if I login and just want to mindlessly play the game, I'll tend to go for something that I can do by myself, or just with whoever happens to be in the same zone as me. The decision to make the living story a direct, repeatable, continuation of the personal story is a great step towards giving us more solo–suitable content, but I'd like to see something a little more long–lasting…

(Bad) Reputation

When I played World of Warcraft, I was never a huge fan of the massive reputation grinds and roundly failed to progress to Exalted with any of the most time–consuming, but on reflection I think that a lot of it was due to the method through which you had to impress the various factions. Running raids over and over. Slaughtering the same mobs relentlessly for drops. Not much fun. All that said, I think the Guild Wars 2 definitely has space for some kind of process of gaining reputation (and rewards) with groups of people.

I'd like to see this done by way of an additional set of daily quests, with a hard limit of how many you can do per day. I could run information–gathering missions for The Durmand Priory, impress the Tyrian Explorers Society by recovering long–lost Dwarven artifacts in the Shiverpeaks, or deliver bribes to powerful people in the capital cities to build support for the Evon Gnashblade and the Black Lion Trading Company. If you don't want to support any of those organisations, maybe you could put effort into impressing the Consortium, Ebon Vanguard, Lionguard, Order of Whispers, or the Vigil instead.

What would I get in return? Titles and skins are the obvious things, and I'd love to be able to spend time unlocking distinctive new outfits which show my affiliations with the various groups in Tyria. If I rock up to guild missions in my resplendent Lionguard armour, y'all know who I'm reppin'. It would be great to see affiliations bleed through into the story as well. Extra dialogue options or reactions from characters who recognise the relationships that you've put effort into building would be small touches that make a big difference.

None of this is really breaking out of the mould of what is already available to us in the game. With some new UI elements, something that I think ArenaNet have gotten very good at, and a clutch of new repeatable quests and rewards, we could have a new solo timesink, ripe for expansion and inclusion in all aspects of the game.

]]>Tue, 17 Jun 2014 23:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/in-the-interim
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/in-the-interimAs the dust settlesAs the dust finally settles on the first season of the living world, we had an extremely brief epilogue to tie things up in the form of Aftermath. We found ourselves back in the Dead End Bar for a quick chat with our friends of these past 15 months. The dialogue between the characters wasn’t great, apart from Taimi, of course, but it did the job. We also had a proper introduction to Majory’s big sister, the Seraph Belinda Delaqua, and learned that she’s soon headed to Brisban Wildlands, the same part of the world that we now believe to be the home of the newly awakened Mordremoth. Season two, here we come…

I was left feeling a little disheartened after the epilogue. We knew that there was a quality–of–life patch on the horizon, but there were no specifics, until ArenaNet were kind enough to bombard us with a packed schedule of new information about what we now know is a huge feature pack coming on April 15. New blog posts are going up almost daily to uncover changes and improvements, and have so far covered a major rework of traits, and the feature that is pretty much at the top of everyone’s wishlist: a wardrobe!

The Charr, the Blood Witch and the Wardrobe

Oh yes, my friends, it’s actually happening. Go and read the announcement and the follow–up FAQ right away, if you haven’t done so already. I don’t need to go on about any of the details, but it’s safe to say that the new wardrobe is something that will completely change the way I play the game. Dyes are going account–bound to boot.

Those little faded icons showing me what I don’t have unlocked yet will encourage me to go out in the world to collect every possible skin I can. I’ll run dungeons to unlock sets now that I only need to do so once. I’ll finish levelling all of the crafting skills to unlock those skins. I’ll actually talk to karma vendors and heart vendors when I level up alts in the hope that they’ll have some cool skin that I don’t have yet. All of it. Heck, I might finally even go for a legendary weapon. Please donate all T6 materials to… ehhh, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Come back!

Just knowing that the wardrobe is coming soon already has me looking at armor and weapons that I have on a character and suddenly remembering that soon I’ll be able to use it on all of my characters. Cue wave of excitement and joy. Any skins unlocked in the PvP locker will also now be available in PvE, which is great for those of us who got lucky with PvP skins from achievement chests.

Town clothes are going away as a separate switchable set and will now be able to be used in combat, with a limitation being that outfits will become a single item slot, stopping people from picking and choosing individual parts to customise their appearance. This doesn’t affect me much because I’ve never given town clothes much thought, but it is concerning for people who do. I think that this is probably something that we’ll just have to live with, although it sounds like we’re going to be getting information soon about crafting town clothes, which might go some way to bringing back the mix and match approach.

The one thing that I’m still keen to learn about is how we’ll go about gaining the transmutation charges that power the new wardrobe. We know that we’ll be able to convert the current transmutation stones, crystals and splitters into charges, but what about after that? Will we still get these items and need to convert them? Will we start getting charges as a daily/monthly reward? While ArenaNet obviously need to keep character aesthetics as a source of income, I’m hopeful that giving us the wardrobe is a step towards making the customisation of our characters less painful. If so, having transmutation charges tightly controlled or hard to acquire without spending lots of cash or gold would be less than ideal.

Easier traits

The simplified trait system looks good, with the biggest changes being the number of points gained, when you get them, how major traits are unlocked, and that we’re now able to retrait for free any time that we’re out of combat. There will also be a new grandmaster trait for every trait line of every profession.

We’ll now have a total of 14 points to spend at level 80, instead of 70 as we do now. Each point in the new system will be worth 5 in the old system. Pretty straightforward. The levels at which these points will be given to characters levelling up has been changed so that they feel more meaningful, but I’ll leave it to you to read about the specifics. I’m witholding judgement until I actually try it out, but what is being implemented seems like a good starting place.

You’ll no longer need to buy trait books to unlock the next tier of traits. Any characters created before April 15 will have all major traits unlocked and ready to select, but any new characters after that point will need to unlock them via trait guides: “You can find trait guides by completing specific content in the world, like story dungeons, minidungeons, WvW, personal story, specific bosses, and discovering certain areas on the world map”. For people who don’t want to do this, you’ll be able to spend a combination of gold and karma to buy the trait guides, but personally I’m really excited about being given another reason to get stuck into all of the various content that the game has to offer.

Finally, you’ll no longer need to visit a profession trainer to reset your traits. The reset button has made the trip over from sPvP and is now available for all, allowing traits to be reconfigured any time you’re out of combat. This is a fantastic change, and I’m happy that I’ll be able to play around with new builds out in the open world. This new system is going to make it much easier for players to switch their builds up, and would go hand–in–hand with the ability to save build templates, which hopefully we might see before the year is out.

The ability to change traits out of combat should open up lots of possibilities for optimising builds per–fight in dungeons, although without templates I’m probably going to need laminated build cards stuck to my monitor for each character so that I can do it quickly. Regardless, I’m looking forward to seeing how the top dungeon speed runners use this to their advantage to get even quicker. On the whole, anything that increases the scope for optimal (but not mandatory) playstyles is a good thing in what is a broadly casual MMO.

The new grandmaster traits are a bit of a mixed bag, but in every case I can see that the intention is to give players more choices when it comes to builds, and not necessarily to give players a new default best choice. Not all of the traits impress initially, but you guys are clever and I’m sure that it won’t be long before we see some really interesting builds coming out. Probably not condition Guardians though.

I’m putting off using up my last two character slots to level an Elementalist and Ranger after the feature pack is released so that I can get the full effect of the levelling changes, so should be able to speak about that more in the future. So far both the trait and wardrobe changes will encourage players to get back out into zones and explore, which can only be a good thing. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a common theme in the remaining feature pack announcements.

]]>Thu, 27 Mar 2014 00:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/as-the-dust-settles
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/as-the-dust-settlesSeason One in reviewThe first season of the Living World comes to a close tomorrow with an epilogue which will likely give us some idea of what's next for Lion's Arch, and where the fight will lead us next. The general feeling seems to be that this first season started off slowly, and has steadily picked up, with some excellent highlights along the way. It definitely bodes well for the future, but before we get there, I want to point out a few of the things that I liked and some that I wasn't so keen on. I'd love to hear what you think, so let me know by leaving a comment below, or getting in touch via Twitter or Facebook.

Favourite release: The Nightmares Within

In the patch prior to Nightmares Within, we saw Kessex Hills devastated by Scarlet and the Toxic Alliance, and uncovered a giant tower right in the middle of the zone. This was our chance to get into the tower itself, battling our way up from the bottom through swathes of Krait and unnerving hallucinations, dodging exploding plants, until we reached the pinnacle. There, we entered the heart of the tower and killed the Champion Toxic Hybrid, viewed by the Krait as an incarnation of their prophets.

What I liked most about this release, largely in retrospect, is that it gave us a good range of content to explore, both in groups and solo. Trying to get all the way up to the top by yourself was extremely challenging (although definitely easier for some professions), but felt like an achievement. The same can be said of finding and besting the chambers scattered throughout. At the other end of the scale, you could either follow a zerg around, clearing your way to the top and killing the various champions that spawned, or take a more tactical approach (i.e. trying not to overscale the events with too many players) and go with a crack 5–man commando team.

Overall, the rewards were so–so (as with most patch content), but the exception here was the extremely popular Gas Mask Skin, the prize for completely the meta achievement. It looks great and you still see it in frequent use. We've had all sorts of backpieces, so I think that attractive headgear is definitely an area that ArenaNet could focus on for rewards in Living World season two.

Biggest disappointment: Battle for Lion's Arch

Now then. I'm quite conflicted with this one. If I list everything that I think that is done well with the latest release, it should come out on top: interesting (albeit too long) boss fight, lots of easy loot, pleasing denoument to the Scarlet storyline. However, it just hasn't gripped me. I've played less in the last fortnight than I have done for a while, and I can't really figure out why.

I think that perhaps it has something to do with expectations riding high after the fun Escape from Lion's Arch release. Maybe Battle for Lion's Arch just feels too similar; maybe a different cosmetic treatment given to the zone would help, although I can understand from a dev perspective why they wouldn't want to do that, particularly given that I'm expecting that to happen soon, perhaps even in the epilogue release tomorrow.

The boss fight, while interesting and a step in the right direction, is incredibly frustrating and too long. I've been in under–populated overflows twice now (out of probably only 10 total attempts) which have barely completed the Knight event, and have then failed to kill the Hologram inside the 30 minute window provided. 30. Minute. Window. It should be pretty much impossible to fail in that amount of time, in my opinion, which means that this should probably have been tuned even lower. It's time–gated, after all, which prevents farming. Let people complete it a little more easily so that we can all experience the end of the story and not be tearing our hair out at having wasted half an hour for nothing.

Best new characters: Majory and Kasmeer

Of all of the story characters that we've been introduced to, Jory and Kasmeer are by far the most developed and interesting. The film noir introduction definitely helped, but each patch I actually look forward to finding the two of them to see what they've deduced from their investigations. The story chapter where we joined them in the Dead End Bar to go through artifacts from our battles with Scarlet and her armies was particularly interesting. I also think that the writing of their romance has been done well for the most part, and has largely avoided clichés.

Funniest conversation: Taimi trolling Braham and Logan

She was in with a shout for best new character, but will have to be happy with this accolade instead. Taimi has had some excellent dialog in the short time since her introduction, but my absolute favourite is her chat with Logan and Braham from the Origins of Madness release. “Help! Help! Save me from this creepy human!”

Best new activity: Sanctum Sprint

It was either this, or Crab Toss for the the sheer hilarity, but I had a great time perfecting my jumps and optimising my route around the sprint track and look forward to it popping up as the daily activity.

Best new area: Bazaar of the Four Winds

It looked great. The achievements were interesting, and I really enjoyed the scavenger hunt. Looking forward to this coming back in the future. Does anyone think that we might see it relocate from Mount Maelstrom to Lion's Arch while the capital is rebuilt?

Most annoying enemies: Toxic Alliance

So. Many. Conditions. Ugh.

Most fun experience: Twisted Marionette

I've covered it before, but it's worth repeating. This fight was loads of fun, and well–balanced to be challenging for non–organised groups of players, with an appropriate rate of reward. I'd love to see more bosses like this in Living World season two.

Worst group decision: Electing Ellen Kiel

I mean, seriously? Total fix. I demand a recount! Gnashblade 4 lyfe.

Best music: Super Adventure Box

]]>Mon, 17 Mar 2014 00:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/season-one-in-review
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/season-one-in-reviewLiving World skillsThroughout the first season of the Living World, we've been introduced to all manner of enemies and
abilities. One potentially interesting way that ArenaNet could commemorate the defeat of
Scarlet Briar and the end of this first season
would be to let us players unlock and use some of those trademark abilities for ourselves. Here are
a few abilities that I think could be unlocked for us all to use.

Toxic Alliance

Toxic Pollen – Place a Toxic Pollen (poison field) at your location. Enemies that get too close
to the pollen are afflicted with an Hallucination, either a poisonous Spider or an Ettin which
knocks them to the ground.

The Toxic Alliance between the Krait and the Nightmare Court brought with them all kinds of nasty
abilities, mostly involving poison and torment, but what sticks out most prominently in my mind are
the Hallucinations given to those unlucky enough to
get too close to a patch of Toxic Pollen. They can
take one of several forms, including a Spider with a poison attack, and an Ettin which knocks
players down.

Molten Alliance

Molten Effigy – Grant might and fury to allies.

The Dredge and Flame Legion Charr that make up the Molten Alliance bring lots of painful skills to
bear on players, including blinding ash clouds and jets of lava, but to me the most visually iconic
element are the hulking Molten Effigies.
While it might be considered as cheating to include a mob in a list of skills, but go with it.
Although the skill sounds fairly standard, might and fury stacking are always welcome (and harder
for some professions than others); the main draw to use this skill would be the animation: a
ghostly, roaring Molten Effigy that appears around your character briefly. Totally badass.

Aetherblades

Scarlet's Tyrian sky pirate Aetherblades have,
arguably, the most infuriating and annoying skillset of all of her forces. A
Shocking Aura that stuns you when you attack,
Arc Lightning which jumps between players, doing
increasing levels of damage, and
Aetherized Shielding which grants complete
invulnerability. It's this last skill that I think players should be able to unlock, albeit with a
fairly short duration and long cooldown.

The Orders of Tyria

While evacuating and, eventually, reclaiming Lion's Arch, members of the three
Orders of Tyria sold buffs to players to help in the
fight. Each of these was not only very useful, but had a distinctive animation. It would be very
cool indeed if ArenaNet made versions of these skills available for players to unlock.

The aethershield gives players a shimmering green forcefield and improves survivability for a short
time. While it's very similar to my earlier suggestion to give players complete invulnerability
via Aetherized Shielding, I see this version as having a longer duration and/or shorter cooldown
and being for more general survivability, as opposed to something you might pop to soak one large
hit.

Also, YOU TURN BIG AND RED. This is the buff that I always ran with and works for everyone as a
simple ‘pop this and do more damage’ skill. It totally reminds me of using
Bestial Wrath in World of Warcraft: when a big
red Core Hound is sprinting towards you, you know that it's time to be somewhere else!

Quickness of Whispers – Gain quickness.

As above, the duration and cooldown can be manipulated to tune this skill and determine whether or
not it would be useful. Some professions don't have access to quickness at all, so I think that
there's definitely merit in having something as straightforward as this. When activated, players
turn small and gain a hazy, distortion–like effect (and then get all stabby).

Currently, dodging while ressing a player or npc doesn’t do anything. This very issue has resulted in my untimely death on multiple occasions, generally when someone comes along and drops an AoE field right on top of you. Fixing dodge so that it would break out of whatever you're currently doing, excepting actions where you’re deliberately supposed to be stationary, would be a good change.

“Allowing the player that opened the dungeon to leave the party or swap characters without booting everyone out. This is the cause of endless frustration for people.”

This is an essential change; it’s somewhat unthinkable that it hasn't happened already, really, which I can only imagine is due to the existence of technical complications. I’ve been lucky not to have been on the receiving end of this often, but have accidentally dumped a whole group out of the final Fractals level when I tried to change characters for Mai Trin without realising that I was the group owner.

“1+2+3: Skin locker. Does that count?”

I’d rather not be forced to have to choose between keeping an old skin from an event that will never return, and obtaining a duplicate piece of armour with the necessary runes/sigils/infusions so that I can use a newly acquired skin. I understand the need to keep skins as a revenue stream via the gem store, but think that players may well be more inclined to purchase if they could be used multiple times, and/or without risk of accidentally losing them.

“'Locked' overflow-type instances.”

As a member of TxS I can entirely understand the desire for this kind of setup. We go through all kinds of hassle trying to get as many guild members into the 150 available main server/overflow slots as possible for events, often leaving some to spend half an hour jumping in and out of portals between zones (a process dubbed ‘taxiing’) hoping to get in. That said, I can also appreciate why ArenaNet are keen to keep organised large–scale PvE in the open world: players who aren’t in super–guilds will never get the chance to serendipitously happen onto a successful kill.

The thing is, Tequatl and the Great Jungle Wurms have such a high bar to entry due to the level of co–ordination required that they’re realistically only aimed at organised groups. The Twisted Marionette from Origins of Madness was an excellent example of a world boss that’s better tailored to casual play, with a graduated reward structure, and relatively straightforward tactics.

I think that a strategy which facilitates ‘private’ instances for the most difficult world bosses that don’t rely on gaming the overflow system, as well as a wide range of challenging, rewarding, but casual–friendly bosses for everybody else would work well for Guild Wars 2.

“The ability to see the fraction of dyes you've collected out of the base set.”

This didn’t get much love on Reddit, but the idea really appeals to the collector in me. Potentially dangerous to the ol’ wallet though. It would be even better if we were able to preview using dyes that we haven’t yet unlocked, and see information on when the dye was added and how to obtain it.

“Give a free bank upgrade of 2 rows. What we have now was good for like a year and a bit, but with all the LS stuff, even a new accounts bank gets filled quickly.”

The number of interesting ‘story’ items filling up bank slots is definitely a good point, although I’m not entirely sold on new bank slots as the most appropriate solution. I’ve had to throw away items like Scarlet Briar’s Journal and the Zephyr Sanctum Model to make room in my bank. Instead, it would have been nice to have had a separate repository specifically for these things that would function as a personal history for your account, separate from the standard bank. Perhaps you could view or reclaim story items from the achievement tab, or keep them in their own tab. There’s been talk for a while of ArenaNet looking to overhaul the way that a character’s personal story and history is represented, and it would be excellent if Living World mementos were made persistent as part of the process.

“Fix the way that conditions work so they aren't competing with each other, in order to make condition builds more viable. Also to fix condition damage against structures.”

There are many documented problems with condition builds in Guild Wars 2, so I won’t go too in–depth, other than to say that a couple in particular have been getting me down of late. The second character I got to level 80 was a Necromancer. Sure, I’ve used power builds, which work well enough, but the condition play–style of loading a single target up with all manner of nasty afflications and then spreading them around with Epidemic is too damn fun not to use.

Sadly, however, that doesn’t follow through into a lot of the Living World content. Take Origins of Madness and Escape from Lion’s Arch as examples: large zerg–type events with enemies that die quickly, and structures that need to be quickly destroyed. Taking a condition build into those situations just doesn’t work. Your conditions will never have long enough to do decent damage to the waves of trash mobs, and they don’t affect structures whatsoever. I’m hopeful that one day ArenaNet will address these issues and make conditions more attractive, but for now my Necromancer will stay unused while I play something in Berserker armour like everyone else.

“Allow us to further zoom out the camera.”

I’ve wanted this since the game launched! The artwork and world design in Guild Wars 2 is fantastic; I only wish I could fit more of it onto my screen at one time. There are a handful of boss fights that zoom your camera out, but I wish we had the option to do it all the time.

Other topics being discussed

There are a lot of suggestions pertaining to the Trading Post, largely around improvements to the interface, better ways to sort items, etc. While this would definitely be nice to have, I feel like the current system does just about work without too much grief, and as such I’d rather wait a while longer for a complete overhaul instead of minor enhancements.

The other big topic of conversation is traits and skills, with many people wanting to be able to save and restore pre–configured builds. I fully admit that I would probably see this as being more urgent if I were the sort of player that jumped between builds on a more regular basis, but I don’t currently see it as being imperative due to the relatively limited choice of traits and skills for each profession. That said, I’d be screwed without having a bunch of trait calculators bookmarked, so maybe I’m using that as a band–aid fix for functionality which the game ought to provide?

Thanks to Redditors gaix2, Groonzie, Tylacat, Wheeton, OptimusYale, csk8tr, and RAMPAAAAAAGE for the ideas discussed in this post.

Here are my rough notes from the developer preview of the ‘Fractured’ patch, dropping tomorrow, November 26. I'm hopeful that the new content and changes to the existing Fractals of the Mists system will reinvigorate the community around them; I’ll definitely be in there trying to get my level up tomorrow evening.

The return of the Molten Facility and the Aetherblade Retreat pave the way for much–loved Living Story content to have its lifespan extended, which is definitely a good thing. Eventually, I foresee some of the original instances being retired (I’m looking at you, Dredge fractal) to make room, which would help to keep things fresh and interesting. Let me know what you think, and I hope to see you in there!

Level reset is due to rebalancing. New content from 30 to 50. Didn't feel right for people to be at level 50 already. Tied in with leaderboards and a new “race to the top”. 50+ is currently not possible until new instabilities are added. Each level after 30 has its own instability. Instabilities start at 31 and go to 50 and are unique to each level. Leaderboard ranks are currently “first come first served”. They’ll see how that works as they add more fractal levels.

Daily reward given every 10 levels. No specifics given over the amount of gold given in each level bracket. Living World rewards are not found in these new fractals. No information on whether or not those will ever come back again. Better chance for fractal weapons. Higher levels drop boxes with weapons which let you choose the stats. Gold reward is more inline with dungeons, and scales with fractal difficulty level.

Looking into long–term uses for fractals currencies (pristine relics, etc). Most likely extending rewards on the token vendors. Crafting materials, different gear. No current plans for fractal rings. Considering salvaging as an option but no solid plans.

New slot type on ascended gear: agony resist. New agony resist infusions go into the new slots. Nothing will change with existing agony. You’ll login with the same amount that you had before the patch. You can combine any two alike infusions to upgrade them. Infinite scaling, but takes longer and longer to increase.

No reset buttons being added, but some bugs have been fixed, e.g. the Cliffside fractal being harder if partially completed and then revisited.

No fractal armour yet, but ascended armour will be dropped into fractals once it’s in the game. Fractal weapons are now skins instead of items, i.e. no transmute stone needed. No new weapons in this release, but the tonic, runes and sigils are now in there. The runes and sigils don't actually drop, just the recipes, and they can be sold on the trading post once crafted.

This is technically a Living Story release because it’s Ellen Kiel making good on her promise to provide the Thaumanova Reactor fractal instance. It’s the only one with a story mode. Captain Frizz is the final boss.

Unlikely to ever have waypoints in fractals, since there are checkpoints. There's definitely precedent for reimagining lore events using fractals. They’ve made some backend changes which will make it easier to add new fractals in the future.

There are new achievments for the new instances, as well as some Living Story achievements for a limited time, with their own meta.

Agony has been changed so that it no longer applies to anything that isn’t a player, meaning that ranger pets, engineer turrets, and necromancer minions are finally safe. Fractal levels are now account–bound. Fractal titles “would be awesome” and could well be added in the future. Because of the new ordering you’re unlikely to get Cliffside and Dredge next to each other. Molten Berserker and Molten Firestorm have had their health slightly reduced, but it’s still plenty hard at level 39.

Thaumanova Reactor looks Asuran in parts, but has new art work. This instance will change in different level brackets, and is unique in that aspect. “Lots of cool mechanics and lots of fun stuff to see”, but we have to wait until tomorrow!

I'm a daily reader of /r/Guildwars2/ sub–Reddit, and thought that it would be worthwhile to highlight a handful of posts that I found interesting or helpful. Feel free to get in touch if you want to put forward something that I might have missed.

A bunch of people, myself included, are using the new full–face gas mask rewarded for completing the Tower of Nightmares meta achievement to look badass. I particularly like this look, and have something very similar.

What would you spend a whole bunch of gems on? If your luck is anything like mine (or kaitoa's) then gambling on Black Lion Chest keys may not be the sure–fire way to get rich quick that you're hoping for.

I've included this largely because it's relevant to my interests, having just finished levelling and gearing up an engineer, but also because it might be something that people aren't aware of. tl;dr is that engineer kits don't scale up to ascended stats, so it's probably only worth thinking about if you're running an SD rifle spec, or something weapon–focused with power as the main stat.

In the run up to what is expected to be a Fractals update patch next week, DanDaze and his guild have made public the results of tracking what dropped from runs at various level brackets. While the percentage breakdowns aren't all that surprising, it also gave rise to the fact that one of the players contributing "runs 6–7 48s a day". Wow.

]]>Mon, 18 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/reddit-roundup-1
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/reddit-roundup-1Obsidian Sanctum updateGuild vs. Guild is getting a major boost this month in the form of changes to the
Obsidian Sanctum map, ArenaNet announced today.

Greetings,

I wanted to let you all know about the progress we have been making on the new area in the Obsidian Sanctum jumping puzzle. We’ve been taking feedback and testing the area and we are planning to release the new version of the map in November, barring any unforeseen difficulties. The changes to the map will remove the Borderlands Bloodlust buff from players in the map and will introduce a brand new area of the map laid out for large player fights. We are also adding the map to the dropdown menu so that players will be more quickly able to enter the map from anywhere, without being required to load into Eternal Battlegrounds.

We hope these changes will create a better WvW experience for everyone while providing a space for players to explore the large scale fights that have organically grown up around the game.

I, personally, would like to give thanks to the WvW team which has done a ton of great work in a very short period of time to make this happen quickly and to accommodate the feedback we have received. We hope you enjoy the new space and thanks for playing!

Devon Carver
WvW Coordinator

The Borderlands Bloodlust buff is going away in order to level the playing field,
and I think it's going to be interesting to see how much this new area is used for
co–ordinated GvG battles, or whether player ingenuity will make other uses of it. I
can already see server commanders barking orders and using Obsidian Sanctum to run
rookies through their paces in WvW Bootcamp.

]]>Mon, 11 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/obsidian-sanctum-update
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/obsidian-sanctum-updateHome improvementsI ended up stuck on a long train journey this weekend and passed the time chatting with a fellow player about some potential small quality–of–life changes. I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas on what minor changes could make your play time more enjoyable.

Item quality outlines
It’s been suggested and mocked up time and time again, but having some kind of item quality colouring is almost certainly my number one request. For such a relatively straight forward (the feature, not necessarily the implementation) UI tweak, I think that it would make it much easier to see at a glance what you had equipped or in your bags.

Inventory sort options
I’d like some ability to have items automatically sorted as they go into my bags. We already have this to some degree by using specific bags to capture specific items, i.e. trash, armour, crafting, but I’d like an inventory–wide option to order items by quality. It’s easy to run out of space when dungeon running, or zerging around a champion farm or in WvW, and having all of my white/green/blue items in a row for easy salvaging would be a real time–saver.

Bag icons shows remaining empty slots
Wow, this seems pretty inventory–heavy so far. The bag icon turns red when your bags are all full, but how about if it actually showed you the exact number of inventory slots that you had left to fill? It might help you plan a timely vendor break to offload.

Better achievement granularity
Both Krait Bane and Toxic Global Gardener in the current living world patch are good examples of this problem: trying to keep track of which parts of a multi–part achievement you’ve already completed. 1/3 Krait Champions Killed — which one?4/5 Maps Cleared of Toxic Offshoots — where have I missed? ArenaNet may have good reason to obfuscate this information, but I would really like a breakdown to be included in the achievement tooltip.

Warning before using an inadequate gathering tool
Keeping track of what gathering tools I have equipped across multiple characters and matching that to what materials I can collect in each zone is boring. I don’t want to give up precious bag space to carry various quality tools, and I don’t want to feel like I need to buy the unlimited gem store versions. Adding a little warning icon overlaid on the gathering node which indicates whether or not the tool I have equipped is good enough (or maybe too good?) would be a nice touch.

]]>Sun, 10 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMThttp://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/home-improvements
http://blacklionchest.co.uk/posts/home-improvementsBlood and MadnessI missed out on Halloween in Tyria the first time around because I was away on holiday, so welcomed its return with some anticipation. Patch day rolled around and I made my way to deepest, darkest Ascalon to dig around the Reliquary and make fun of Prince Thorn, collecting my handy–dandy Relay Golem on the way out. I enjoyed the ‘straight to the point’ exposition and thought that the characters of Thorn and Magister Tassi were decent enough.
Your Mad King says… JUMP! JUMP!

Next, I ran around Queensdale opening doors until I could enter the Mad King’s realm. I made a beeline for the Mad King’s tower, having heard great things about the challenge that it offered. 45 sweary minutes later, I was in total agreement. I’m no jumping puzzle aficionado—there are a good few that I haven’t completed yet—but the fast pace and learnability makes this one just about perfect. I’ve been back a handful of times since to complete dailies and will be sad to see it gone.

By far the most rewarding part of this patch, for me and many others, has been the levelling train charging around and around the labyrinth. My engineer was boosted from 60 to 80 in no time, and I had a brilliant time doing it. There’s just about the right level of difficulty present to keep players on their toes: trying to get around solo means getting pulled all over the place and rooted, and each champion boss has a mechanic that, if ignored, will cause zergs to die quickly.

After a few rounds of ghostly British Bulldogs (fun, but would benefit from more achievements and/or better rewards), I made a short but sweet (badum tsh) return trip to the Reliquary to put Prince Thorn back in his box. It’s clearly setting us up for round two next year, which I’m looking forward to already.

All in all, I’ve found Blood and Madness to be a lot of fun and the first successful return of an annual event. It would have been nice if the story had reached a little further; perhaps the Relay Golem could’ve been put to better use, maybe providing players with a quick way to get into the Mad King’s realm after some kind of attunement quest.